Adobe announced earlier this week that it plans to lay off almost 10% of its workforce. At the same time, though, the company also announced that it plans to expand its investment in e-books and digital publishing. Adobe is creating a new organization within the company that will focus on products for book, newspaper and magazine publishers. With Bill McCoy, however, the company is also losing one of its most visible advocates for open e-book standards in this week’s layoffs.
Reorganizing Adobe’s E-Book Groups
This new organization within Adobe will bring together the e-book business groups that worked on the Adobe Reader Mobile SDK, Adobe Content Server, Adobe Digital Editions, as well as the group that worked with the New York Times on the Times Reader 2.0. The new group will focus on developing products and business opportunities for digital publishers. These will include support for business models like subscription, advertising and retail.
Sony, for example, currently uses Adobe’s Content Server to power its DRM solution for e-books. While Sony offers its e-books in the ePub format, it also uses Adobe’s Content Server to wrap a proprietary DRM solution around the open ePub format.
Bill McCoy is Leaving Adobe
Bill McCoy drove Adobe’s push towards making ePub the default format for eBooks. McCoy, however, is leaving Adobe as part of the restructuring. We can only hope that the company will continue to push for open standards in McCoy’s absence. More details about McCoy’s role at Adobe can be found at TeleRead.